The diary and musings of a mobile marketer. I am Helen Keegan, a specialist in mobile marketing, advertising and media. I run the Swedish Beers parties in London and Barcelona. For the day job, I advise on mobile strategy for media owners and the odd brand and mobile start-up. I do a fair few speaking gigs, run events for clients and do developer outreach. I write here about mobile things that interest me. And some stuff that's just about my day to day life.

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Thursday, November 23, 2006

Casino Royale does mobile content via bluetooth

So I come out of the cinema on Saturday night having seen the fabulous Casino Royale with Sony's amazing product placement. I'm waiting for my pal who's in the ladies and spy this Hypertag system attached to the postcard stand in the upstairs lounge area offering free Casino Royale mobile content. Well, I'm definitely into Daniel Craig as James Bond now so thought I'd give it a go to see what I'd get... they give you step by step instructions

Step 1. Turn on bluetooth or infra-redStep 2. Change your phone's name to BondStep 3. Point your phone at the box and wait for up to a minute to receive a messageStep 4. Get content.

Well, I actually know where my bluetooth is and even though it's a bit of a pain to change my phone name, I do it. I point my phone at the box. I wait for a bit and I get a message saying 'receive free Casino Royale content' or similar. I click yes to accept. The message disappears. This happens about 5 or 6 times before I give up. And I'm on a Nokia N70 and happily share bluetooth files between my pc and my phone and other phones for that matter. So I really don't understand why it's not working. And if it's not working, how many others is it not working for.

And it's not even been up very long because the film's only been out for a few days. And I didn't see anyone else giving it a go so I don't think the Hypertag system was clogged up with requests at the same time that I was trying...

Ho hum. I really want to believe that there is a future in bluetooth marketing but experiences like these make me feel that we're still some way away from it. Sod's law that I'm the one who found the dodgy system (I seem to *always* be the one to find a bug in a mobile campaign) or is this the general consumer experience for current versions of bluetooth content delivery?

7 comments:

They've got one of these in a bar near where I live in South London, and I tried it a couple of weeks ago... in my case however, it actually worked fine (with a Nokia N80). The only issue I found is that now, every time I enter this bar, it tries to send me the clip again, so obviously doesn't have a good memory..

I think the user experience it's very bad... I don't understand why you have to change your bluetooth name. I work for a company that create mobile proximity campains and we try to do it as easy as possible. Only turn on your bluetooth and accept the request to download the content. Do a good communication and that's all.

Nacho, the name change works as a sort of opt-in mechanism. What you describe is also known as bluespamming - sending messages to any device that has BT turned on, regardless of whether they want to receive that message or not.I'm by no means an expert on bluetooth marketing, but this certainly seems one of the main problems: you either spam people randomly, or if you don't, the process of getting content gets a little complicated. The first option will piss people off, so is of doubtful marketing value, while the second option means that many people just can't be bothered.

I don't know whether Hypertag hardware works ok or not - I've only experienced one example recently so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I agree that changing your bluetooth name is cumbersome but it is one way of managing opt-in - albeit not terribly effectively bearing in mind the average medium/low mobile user (i.e. 80% of the market) will not even know where their bluetooth settings are.

As for other systems that routinely scan a location to see if someone has their bluetooth switched on and then send them a message saying 'click here to receive our data/message/content/whatever' is spam. Even the DMA has ruled against it. And I haven't seen a viable opt-in alternative.

@Mario. Do you still get the messages because you've retained your bluetooth name and never changed it back?

Yes of course, I now like to be known exclusively by the name of Bond! You're right though, I've never bothered to switch the name back. And thinking about it, it probably makes sense.. I'm not terribly familiar with bluetooth technology, but unlike other forms of mobile marketing, the bluetooth kiosk may not actually have any info to identify me personally, just my bluetooth name. Only myself to blame then..

I work for Hypertag and it's been useful getting the feedback. I too am disappointed (and surprised) you didn't receive anything from the Hypertag. There are no issues we know of with the N70 and as far as we can see all the Hypertags are operating fine. In spite of that if you can tell me which cinema it was I'll double check. Thanks for giving us the benefit of the doubt though and if you do want to try others there are about 80 around London. I'd be happy to tell you where you can find one local to you.

As you and Mario say, having an effective and user friendly way of opting in is important. So, we are trying out various methods to see what works best. We like to include opt-ins for the advertisers' benefit too so they know the usage results reflect the number of people who wanted the content and that it's not having an adverse effect by annoying consumers.